Saturday Newsbreak: 9/22

--Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has expressed plans to visit the site of the World Trade Center and lay a wreath there on his upcoming trip to speak at the United Nations in New York. And, naturally, a lot of people aren’t too happy with that. This includes faltering Presidential candidate, Republican Mitt Romney, who’s taken up Ahmadinejad’s visit as a safe campaign issue to rant indignantly about. Then, not to be outdone, candidates John McCain and Fred Thompson felt compelled to make tough, “brave” statements putting down the Iranian president. Ahmadinejad has denied the Jewish Holocaust during World War II and accused the European nations who have strict anti-holocaust-denial laws of using the issue to have European Jews immigrate to Israel. This denial of proven history on the part of Ahmadinejad has given him many enemies in the West. But he is the official leader of Iran, a large, important nation which the US and the United Nations as a body are trying to dissuade from developing nuclear weapons. To me, in spite of all of this individual’s personal shortcomings, he should be welcomed at the site to pay his respects. I believe that symbolic acts such as this one, or the American ping-pong team’s visit to China in 1971, can be ground-breakers, opening previously-locked doors and leading to greater mutual understanding and reconciliation. Both Iran and the United States have long lists of grievances that they harbor against each other. I believe that, at some time in the future, these two great nations will become allies. But first, one step at a time!

--The small Louisiana town of Jena is in the national spotlight for a ridiculous escalation of petty racial feuds, starting with who got to sit under a certain tree, of all things! With each affront, the other side would increase its response until we now have a situation where people’s freedoms and lives are at stake. My take on what happened there is that there is some residual white-supremacist “throwback” sentiment in Jena among some whites who believe that blacks have to stay in their “place”. But this is the 21st century, and such attitudes need to be firmly countered. The situation there, as I saw it, was that the white offenders in the conflict had their wrists slapped lightly, while black offenders were imprisoned and charged with serious felony crimes (even though they were minors). I’m glad that this conflict has achieved national attention and that many went there to express their views. But in the midst of all this, regardless of which position one holds, there was still a serious physical assault committed that needs legal redress.

--We’ve had here, for the last couple of days in north-central Florida, some really turbulent weather. On the satellite map, it looked like a tropical storm, but the sustained winds weren’t strong enough to merit a name for it. It’s has quickly swung around in the Gulf of Mexico, strengthened slightly, and then dumped a lot of nasty weather on the Gulf coast in the Florida panhandle.

--I picked up the University of Florida’s Independent Florida Alligator newspaper yesterday to get a sense of what’s going on down there on campus. The big buzz is still about student Andrew Meyer’s Taser incident at John Kerry’s campus visit. Both the newspaper’s editor and editorial cartoonist each quoted the same two nationally-known commentators in expressing their negative opinions of Meyer. And which distinguished opinion-makers did they cite? Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central! If this is the direction that journalism is going, maybe I should just start reading The Onion for my news!

--The Florida Gators football team has shown, at least so far this year, that it is one of the premier squads in the country. Tim Tebow, their sophomore quarterback, seems to be increasingly the object of hero worship among the “Gator Nation”, something that’s a bit unsettling to me. Gator coach Urban Meyer has never stuck around with a team long enough to coach it in his third year (and really test how well his own recruits have developed). So, we’re in a sort of uncharted territory, but so far it looks very promising. Very tough LSU (at their stadium) is going to be UF’s opponent on October 6, though!

Unintended Consequences

Although he can be awfully obnoxious at times, Fox News big shot Bill O’Reilly does get one thing right: he devotes much of his time decrying something he calls “unintended consequences”. With him, of course, it’s usually related to his “culture wars” or politicians who don’t tow his line on a particular issue. But unintended consequences can have either positive or negative outcomes (or both). Here are some examples:

--Aviation pioneer Steve Fossett recently disappeared in his small plane somewhere in the northern mountainous Nevada wilderness. Because of this, a wide search has been underway to discover his fate and to possibly rescue him. Although at this writing, he hasn’t been found, eight other crashed planes have been found as a consequence of the search. And quite possibly one of the planes was flown by a man who disappeared in 1964, leaving a (then) four-year old son, who is now living in the Gainesville area.

--During the 1970s, the Nixon Administration tried to have former Beatle John Lennon deported from the U.S., but the efforts were futile and Lennon was able to stay in his adopted country. But in December 1980, he was assassinated in his favorite city, New York.

--When Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Waylon Jennings were on tour during the late 1950s, they once had an opportunity to travel on a small plane. But there wasn’t enough room for the three of them, so they flipped to see who had to stay behind. Waylon lost, and because of that, he survived the fate of his two friends when the plane later crashed.

--President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 under the banner of fighting terrorism, but the subsequent occupation has had the opposite effect, with militant and pro-terrorist movements such as Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah experiencing unprecedented popularity in sections of the Muslim world (partially in opposition to the US occupation of Muslim Iraq). And diverting resources into Iraq from Afghanistan, where we had been pursuing the Al-Qaeda leadership, has created the situation where the Taliban there is resurgent and Bin-Laden, complete with his newly-dyed beard, is sending out arrogant videos taunting us. He is a premeditated mass murderer, but one of our government officials recently dismissed him as “irrelevant”.

--During the 1970s, when the Space Shuttle was up for initial funding, there was a plan for a sturdy, highly protective outer casing to the Shuttle. Instead, in order to save money, a cheaper and highly inferior tile-system was funded. And now, after the Columbia disaster a few years ago, we all have to hold our breaths every time the Shuttle takes off or lands, just in case some dinky little piece of crud hits the ship and damages it to where it can’t withstand reentry.

--First, the Democrats in Florida, thinking they were so smart, voted to move their presidential primary ahead of the others. Then the national Party declared that the results of such a primary would not produce any voting delegates. Now, because of that, many Florida Democratic voters are thinking of boycotting the primary altogether. And because of that, they won’t vote on an important state-wide property tax referendum that is on the ballot on that same primary election day.

--Back in late 1990, Congress was debating whether or not to support President Bush’s (#41) proposed military action to remove the Iraqis from Kuwait. Senator Al Gore was one who was teetering with his vote. Finally, he voted with the President (and against most of his Party). Two years later, Gore was picked by Bill Clinton as a pro-defense running mate and was elected as his Vice-President. I believe that some of the ambitious Democrats, such as Hillary Clinton and John Edwards (who was still in the Senate), took this “lesson” and supported the authorization-of-force bill that was passed in late 2002. Only this time it backfired on them. And it may well have cost Edwards the nomination (and possibly the Presidency) in 2004.

--After the 2000 Presidential Election, Democratic lawyers descended on three South Florida counties (Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach) to try to manipulate the recounts to favor their candidate Al Gore (trying to count formerly rejected ballots in those counties, all three of which went for Gore) and tip the statewide balance in favor of him. Doing this, though, had the unintended consequence of delaying the more fair statewide recount and pushing litigation to the point where the US Supreme Court intervened (in my lay opinion, incorrectly) and handed the Election to Bush.

I ‘m not sure exactly what lessons can be learned from the previous examples, except that we only fool ourselves when we believe that we can manipulate and control our futures with our pet assumptions and strategies. Because, after all, “stuff” happens (to put it euphemistically), and there are too many variables in our world and lives for us to be as overconfident as we sometimes are about our destinies.

Favorite Songs of 2004

As I go back further in time in examining my favorite songs from the past, I run across some songs, in increasing frequency, that actually were hits in earlier years. Sometimes the gap between a song’s popularity and my choice of it as a favorite can be as long as twenty years or more! And although that isn’t the case with any of the tunes for 2004, there may be a couple that had come out the previous year or two which took me a while to notice. Here are 2004’s best (to me):

Fallen (Sarah McLachlan)
My Immortal (Evanescence)
Fortunes Faded (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
Almost Honest (Megadeath)
Megalomaniac (Incubus)
Lying From You (Linkin Park)
Ride (The Vines)
Float On (Modest Mouse)
Talk Shows on Mute (Incubus)
Ch-Check It Out (Beastie Boys)
Maps (The Yeah Yeah Yeahs)
Followed the Waves (Melissa auf der Maur)
Here and Now (Letters to Cleo)
Take Me Out (Franz Ferdinand)
Move Ya Body (Nina Sky)
The Way You Move (OutKast)
Duality (Slipknot)
Underwear Goes Inside the Pants (Lazyboy)
Are You Gonna Be My Girl (Jet)
Mosh (Eminem)
American Idiot (Green Day)
Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Green Day)
Counting the Days (Collective Soul)
This Fire (Franz Ferdinand)
Look What You've Done (Jet)
12:51 (The Strokes)
Coin-Operated Boy (Dresden Dolls)
Misfit (Elefant)
Nowhere Again (Secret Machines)
Primitive (Ambulance)
No Phone (Cake)

Until late summer/early fall, 2004, there weren’t very many notable songs. The big song from that time was Sarah McLachlan’s beautiful ballad Fallen. Then, sometime around September, I began to listen to 100.5-WHHZ (“The Buzz”) in earnest (I had been listening to it sporadically for about a year). The quality of music put out by this independent/alternative rock station was amazing and refreshing. There was a plethora of great songs from the last part of 2004, from Ride by the Vines, with its simple garage-band sound, to the Strokes with their enduring 12:51 (my #19 all-time favorite). Bands with female lead singers were also featured, such as Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Here and Now by Letters to Cleo. Two novelty songs, Underwear Goes Inside the Pants by Lazyboy, and Coin-Operated Boy by the Dresden Dolls, were interesting and funny. My favorite song (back then) for 2004 was Jet’s tribute to the Beatles, Look What You’ve Done, with 12:51, Ride, This Fire (by Franz Ferdinand), and Primitive (by Ambulance) following close behind. And Cake’s No Phone was a fitting, funny tribute to all of those times in my life when I’ve had quite enough of the world, wanting no more than to just shut it out for a while, spend a little quiet time in solitary contemplation, and of course, turn off the phone!

Police Excesses

The day before yesterday (9/17), Massachusetts Senator and almost-President John Kerry came to the University of Florida campus to speak and answer audience questions. The speech was held in a relatively small auditorium and, according to the pictures I've seen of the event, was rather sparsely attended. Kerry's appearance went smoothly until the very end, when a UF student, Andrew Meyer, rushed to the questioner's microphone and began to rant to Kerry about various issues, including Kerry's acceptance of the 2004 Election results, his supposed membership in Yale's Skull and Bones, and the lack of any move to impeach Bush. Finally, after a couple of minutes (as I heard it told), Meyer's microphone was cut off and he was told to stop. But he wouldn't, and the University Police who were present rushed to him, grabbed him, partially handcuffed him, and Tasered him. Finally, they dragged him down the aisle in front of Kerry and the "crowd" into the lobby while the Senator tried to respectfully address Meyer's concerns and urge the audience to be calm.

From what I've seen and read about this incident, it clearly looks as if the police grossly overreacted to Meyer, even though they displayed the typical, perfunctory "politeness" at the beginning of the interaction that the police are trained for. And then, since that didn't work, attack! As a matter of fact, this bears a slight resemblance to the exaggerated portrayal of "cops gone wild" at the close of The Blues Brothers! But, unfortunately, this isn't an isolated incident. Mr. Meyer seemed disruptive and obnoxious, but not dangerous to anyone. And certainly undeserving of Tasering.

A few years ago, in Florida, a woman who obviously had been drinking, had pulled off the road in her car and had passed out (pretty sensible of her, I might say, to pull off the road first). She had a gun in her lap (that part wasn't so cool) and the car was locked up. A policeman noticed the car, looked inside, and called up for "reinforcements". The police, with guns drawn and pointed at her, then proceeded to try to break open the window to get to her (instead of just patiently waiting for her to revive). Naturally, she awoke, startled, and instinctively reached for the gun on her lap. To which our public protectors, the police, responded by shooting her to death. To the best of my recollection, those police involved in this incident were exonerated in the woman's death.

I know that it's a good thing to have police to protect us from unsavory elements in our society. But when they begin to regard everybody as a potential criminal, they become a danger unto themselves. Once, in the early 1980s, I was living in an apartment next to a big field. One night, I decided to take a pleasant walk across the field to buy some Krispy Kreme doughnuts from the shop on the other side. When I got to the middle of the field, I stopped for a few minutes and gazed up at the night sky, something that I was in the habit of doing. After I had bought my doughnuts and was crossing back through the field, I noticed a slow-cruising police car in the adjacent parking lot. As I crossed the field, this car seemed to be going awfully slow, and seemed to be interested in me. And it was, following me all the way back to my apartment and then flashing its headlights directly at me as I opened the door to my apartment. To me, this was police harassment. After getting inside, I immediately called the police and lodged a complaint over the phone, but nothing, of course, ever came of it. But I know that, even though I had done nothing wrong, if that policeman on that evening had decided to provoke something stronger against me, than it would have come down in court as his word against mine, and his spin of the events would have prevailed.

I'll be the first person to admit that the profession of law enforcement is very demanding, stressful and dangerous. It's also very necessary, and I do appreciate the sacrifices that police personnel have made for us. I just think that sometimes they go over the line and regard the people out there as criminals to be caught instead of citizens to be protected.

Safety Hatch

I am an avid fan of the first two Star Trek TV series, along with the movies that accompanied them. In Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock are having a seemingly casual exchange of words before Kirk is beamed down with his party deep underneath the surface of a planet (with Spock left in charge of the Enterprise). One of the things Kirk said to Spock was the cryptic comment, “Hours seem like days.” Later on, Kirk and his party are marooned under the planet’s surface while his ship is off fighting the ruthless Khan (who can eavesdrop on Kirk and Spock’s radio transmissions). While everyone around him is talking about the strategies they will employ to survive in their new home, Kirk casually opens his communicator, says over it to Spock, “Ready to beam up”, and suddenly everyone is back on board the Enterprise! This happened because Kirk and Spock had their own private code that automatically kicked in at a certain specified time (that no one else knew about, friend or foe).

In a roundabout way, this is what many of us need in our own lives: a private “code” whereby at a certain, specified time (at regular waking intervals), we automatically stop what we’re doing (at least in our minds) and reappraise the directions we are going in. And to listen to our emotional and physical states as well.

Many years ago, I once read a small book written by a jogger who described his own experiences and strategies with his running. One thing that he did and which he recommended was, at certain stages of his running, he would say to himself “safety hatch”, and that would be the time in which he would try to appraise objectively where he was at with his running so far.

The sort of thing that I have been describing so far is designed to “break the limiting patterns” of one’s life (as self-improvement guru Anthony Robbins has described). What if, I take an arbitrary time, say, at :40 past the hour, and use it briefly to evaluate the past hour and determine any corrections that need to be made? Wouldn’t this be a good strategy for anybody, and wouldn’t it go a long way to prevent bad situations from developing? Just a thought that may be worth considering and developing!

Reverse Opinions

Back when I was in high school, some of my friends were deeply into playing chess. And they were good, real good! Although I couldn’t hold a candle to them playing the game, I enjoyed watching them play from time to time. Sometimes they would, as a practice tool, reverse the rules of the game to where the object was to place one’s pieces in positions in which the opponent would be forced to capture them (by that game’s rules). The object was to lose all of one’s pieces first (with the kings being capturable). This game, which I believed they called “Take Me” (because that’s what was called out when a piece had to be taken), was in reality reverse chess. And it evidently strengthened the players so that they had a much better perspective on different situations and strategies when they played the regular game.

In the same spirit, for all of the great opinionated people out there, be they politicians, academicians, bloggers, media commentators, authors, editors, think-tank eggheads, or others who have strong views that they insist on releasing onto the world, I have a proposition. Why don’t you set aside a specially-designated time or space within your medium and express “reverse opinions”? This would mean taking issues or personalities that you have strong opinions on and deliberately taking the opposite position from what you’re accustomed to. High school and college debate teams often undergo the same process, so that a debater may have to argue in favor of a position that he or she personally disagrees with.

An “exercise” such as “reverse opinions” is a good way to try to get inside the heads of one’s ideological, political, and religious adversaries, at least long enough to see where they are coming from. And who knows, this may sometimes sway opinions in a new direction. I’m afraid, though, that this is exactly one of the major fears that would prevent people from trying this. But I believe that the major reason standing in the way of opinion-givers practicing with “reverse opinions” is that many of them are personally incapable of accepting that those with opposing views merit their attention, unless it involves ridiculing their cultural backgrounds or branding them with epithets implying that they are stupid, evil, ambitious, simplistic, elitist, naïve, or culturally backward (or any combination of these).

Evolutionary Trees

One of the things that I am interested in is determining when and where different species arose from others, and under what kinds of circumstances the transformations took place. To be sure, a great part of my understanding of this process can be accomplished by studying a textbook about evolution. But I’d like to know how the different species of animal and plant life arose, as well as the limits to this knowledge that biological scientists are faced with. For example, what is the origin of the common American opossum, the house cat, or the mockingbird (our Florida “State Bird”)? Do the species that they “split” from still exist, when and where did the splits occur, and what caused the splits? Tens of thousands of distinct species of currently existing animal life have already been enumerated. And many more extinct species as well. What, in detail, are their relationships with each other? I’d like to get hold of a “family tree” for species that show where they came from. But more than that, I’d like to have access to a source that reveals the “nodes” of time in which species evolved from others, and the degree of successful research toward explaining these changes.

Understanding general principles of evolution is one thing: knowing details is another. By analogy, I may learn all sorts of principles pertaining to the field of astronomy, but what if I want to learn specific information about, say, Vega, the Orion Nebula, or M88? This is the sort of question I am asking about the origin of species. I guess that, so far, I haven’t been looking in the right places for my answers! Does anybody out there in blog-land have any suggestions? I can’t believe that materials don’t exist that provide exactly the kind of species-evolutionary trees I am searching for!

Saturday Newsbreak: 9/15

--The recent discovery of someone, apparently working for the NFL’s New England Patriots, videotaping the defensive signals of their opponent, the New York Jets (in flagrant violation of stated NFL rules), has caused many people to rethink just how legitimate this team’s phenomenal success (three Super Bowl victories) has been in the last few years. Being a Miami Dolphins fan, I wonder myself how much this cheating contributed to my team missing the playoffs, especially in the 2002 and 2005 seasons. But the truth is that this type of speculation can develop into a sort of mind trap that can lead to one doubting the legitimacy of anything. Better to say that the world always has had within it an element of corruption, and that, hopefully, offenders with be caught often enough and punished effectively enough to lend the different institutions involved a general sense of legitimacy. Other than that, there’s not much more that one could reasonably hope for. Anyway, it will be interesting to see how the Patriot’s “vaunting” offense, led by overbearing, arrogant quarterback Tom Brady, fares in the ensuing weeks without their “advantage”!

--On a more ominous note, Humberto developed from a tropical depression to full-blown hurricane in the record time of 18 hours and then immediately slammed into the Texas-Louisiana coast. This may be a portent of things to come this hurricane season, now that the La Niña effect is in full swing out in the Pacific. We may be in for a rough couple of months!

--Presidential candidate Fred Thompson seems to have chosen the strategy of generalities and fuzziness as a proven method of gaining his party’s nomination and, ultimately, the Presidency itself. Proven, because two previous Republican candidates initially won their offices the same way: Richard Nixon and George W. Bush.

--Last Wednesday, another strong earthquake, with 8.4 intensity, occurred in the Indian Ocean near Indonesia’s populous island of Sumatra. They, as you probably know, were stricken with a horrible tsunami a couple of years ago, bringing mass loss of live and devastation. But the tsunami wave from this quake went almost totally in the opposite direction from Sumatra’s shore. I rather doubt that my advice will be taken, but I’m going to give it anyway. To those in Sumatra living near the shore: take the hint, pack up your belongings, and head for the hills!

--A recent French-language newspaper carried an editorial cartoon with a variation of the oft-asked question, “What were you doing on 9/11?” In this cartoon, the question is being posed to mass murderer, monster Osama bin Laden, who is shown sitting in a comfortable chair in his cave hideout, surrounded by henchmen and holding a sheet titled “attack plans”. Bin Laden answers the question by stating, “Exactly the same thing!” But according to my own government, he is no longer relevant. If that’s the case, then why don’t we just release all of our own convicted murderers as well, since we’re apparently letting this creep off the hook?!

Recent Universal Studios Trip

Orlando’s Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure are two of my top three favorite theme parks to visit (along with Tampa’s Busch Gardens). Last month, my family and I paid a day-long visit there, for the first time since 2003. I wish we had been able to spend more time on our visit, since there are so many things to do at these two fine parks. But we did purchase fifteen-month passes, so more visits are in the works. Still, even though we had purchased special “express” passes, the experience we had there was hectic and whirlwind.

Universal’s express pass system is, in my opinion, much superior to Walt Disney World’s ride “appointment” system. Although express passes do cost a little more (unless you stay at one of Universal’s hotels, and then they are complimentary) while Disney’s system is “free”, you really do save a lot more time waiting in lines at Universal than Disney. And this was true for our visit last month as well. Upon entering the park, starting in Islands of Adventure, we rushed over to the Incredible Hulk Coaster, a green monster that propels the riders off like a rocket. This multi-looping steel coaster is fun to ride, as well as to watch others ride. Next, we rode Doctor Doom’s Fear Fall, a ride set on a very tall tower along the length of which riders are raised and lowered quickly and repeatedly. Both Fear Fall and the Hulk Coaster are visible from well outside the park. After that, we went to the Spiderman ride, which I sat out (I wasn’t very impressed with it as so many others were when I rode it back in 2003). Then we went down the “road”, bypassing Popeye’s Bilge-Rat Barge (an extremely wet round-raft-rapids ride) and getting on Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls “canoe” ride. I really enjoyed this one, although the last time I had ridden it in 2003, I had ripped my pants sitting down in it. Hence, I’ve called it “Rip-pants Falls”! Following that, we trudged on in the heat to Jurassic Park, where we rode their exciting boat ride with its long, dark, steep tunnel-drop at the end. Then, we staggered in the ever-oppressive heat over to the Dueling Dragons coasters, two intertwined steel coasters (“Fire” and “Ice”) that sweep their hanging passengers to within feet of each other and which are, to me, the best rides in Islands of Adventure. We managed to go through two more attractions there (Poseidon’s Fury and the Cat in the Hat) before we had to retreat to an air-conditioned restaurant for lunch (and air-conditioning): the Hard Rock Café.

After our respite, we sauntered over next door to Universal Studios, where we found more crowds and even more brutal mid-summer afternoon heat. We rode Revenge of the Mummy (which hadn’t yet appeared in 2003). This was the best ride at Universal Studios by far! We then struggled, like parched travelers in a desert, over to the Men in Black ride, where we encountered their ridiculous locker system. You see, on every other ride at Universal, they didn’t care too much about what you did with your possessions: that was your problem. But in order to ride Men in Black, you had to put any loose possessions in a locker (after waiting in a stupidly long line to procure one). Finally, after a series of hassles there, we went on the ride, which I found moderately enjoyable, but which others in my family liked a lot more. When we got out of that one (and bought a picture of us on the ride “zapping” aliens), we started to go over to one of my favorite Universal rides, which was their Back to the Future ride. Only one problem: they had closed down that ride and were constructing a new ride based on the TV series The Simpson’s. What a major bummer! We were all about to collapse from the stifling heat, so we decided to ride on one more ride (the thoroughly enjoyable E.T. Adventure) and then head back to our hotel. Just when we arrived at E.T., it began to rain, and when the ride was over, we walked outside into a downpour/lightning storm. After standing under a shelter for several minutes, we decided to just walk on back in the middle of the storm! Which turned out to be quite pleasant, especially compared to our previous “desert” experience!

On this latest trip to Universal, we tried to do too much in too little time. But back in July, 2003, we stayed at one of their hotels (The Royal Pacific, which I highly recommend) and enjoyed five days at the parks, a much more pleasant and meaningful experience! I think our future trips there are going to require a little more planning and common sense on our part!

Favorite Songs of 2005

During 2005, I was totally immersed, musically speaking, in listening to independent/alternative rock on 100.5 WHHZ “The Buzz””. And that’s where, with very few exceptions, all of the songs on this list come from! Oh, by the way, this (and future) lists are based on my favorites as I lived through each year back then, and not on how I feel about the songs now. The further back in time I go, the more difference this distinction will make. Here are my favorites from 2005:

Ocean Breathes Salty (Modest Mouse)
The End Has No End (Strokes)
Bam Thwok (Pixies)
Walk Idiot Walk (Hives)
Breakin’ (The Music)
Walking With a Ghost (Tegan and Sara)
All Because of You (U2)
Right Right Now Now (Beastie Boys)
Finding Out True Love is Blind (Louis IV)
New Slang (The Shins)
Chocolate (Snow Patrol)
Since You’ve Been Gone (Kelly Clarkson)
Holiday (Green Day)
Sitting Waiting Wishing (Jack Johnson)
Combat Baby (Metric)
Spitting Games (Snow Patrol)
E-Pro (Beck)
Galvanize (Chemical Brothers)
TKO (Le Tigre)
An Honest Mistake (The Bravery)
Evil (Interpol)
Good is Good (Sheryl Crow)
Speed of Sound (Coldplay)
Two Timing Touch & Broken Bones (Hives)
Bleed Like Me (Garbage)
Girl (Beck)
Banquet (Block Party)
Bandages (Hot Hot Heat)
Love in a Trash Can (Raveonettes)
LSF (Lost Souls Forever) (Kasabian)
Soul Meets Body (Deathcab for Cutie)
Bang Theory (World Leader Pretend)
The Engine Driver (Decembrists)
Only (Nine Inch Nails)
Reptilia (Strokes)


My favorite of the bunch is Soul Meets Body by Deathcab for Cutie. Close behind it, though, is the sister act Tegan and Sara’s inspired Walking With a Ghost and Snow Patrol’s throbbing Chocolate. Kasabian contributed to my favorites with their cryptic LSF (see their video for it; it goes well with the song). Nine Inch Nails has an entry as well with their overtly angry, covertly “self-improvement” (at least the way I interpret it) song Only. Rounding out my “favorites of my favorites” for 2005 are two great ones by the Strokes: The End Has No End and Reptilia (which has quite possibly the best “performance” video I’ve seen to date)!

Christopher Hitchens

I recently witnessed a C-Span interview with renowned author/editor Christopher Hitchens. I must be really out of touch with the “intelligentsia”, because up until this show, I had never heard of him. He is certainly an interesting character, to say the least.

Christopher Hitchens is currently an editor with Vanity Fair and writes for Free Inquiry, a magazine promoting skepticism. He has been a very outspoken individual on the subjects of socialism (he was an advocate of Trotskyism), religion (he is an anti-organized-religion atheist), and the Iraq War (he supported it, to his leftist colleagues’ dismay). In everything, he has a very blunt, direct, albeit honest style has its appeal, regardless of the merit of his expressed opinions. Hitchens is currently featured in a Newsweek magazine article highlighting his long-time criticism of Mother Teresa’s legacy in Calcutta, India. Hitchens believed that she hurt the people she was supposedly serving by exalting their poverty while simultaneously keeping the women there in an oppressed state by opposing any contraception and emphasizing their subservient role. He has stated that to believe that a God responsible for the creation of the entire universe is attentive to a believer’s individual prayers is extremely narcissistic and unhealthy. He has characterized Billy Graham as “evil”, particularly in his recruitment of young people to a belief system that Hitchens says Graham no longer believed in. He accused Graham of being a convenient public relations buffer between Presidents and their troubles that they accrued in office. Hitchens is merciless with his denunciations of Mormonism and Scientology. But he saves his greatest criticism for extremist Islam. Hitchens believes that the followers of Al-Qaeda and other extremist Islamic groups are bent on world domination, and to see the recent terror attacks and wars as a reaction to perceived Western or Israeli “aggression” is delusional and dangerous. This is why he has supported President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, a view that has distanced him from other leftist intellectuals. Hitchens also has claimed that, although Bush has claimed adherence to evangelistic Christianity, he has done more than any other President in actually bringing about a more secular society. After 9/11, Hitchens, originally a British subject, filed for citizenship here and has become an American citizen.

Christopher Hitchens, with his denunciations of organized religion, sounds like he is standing up for people who are in the face of manipulation and abuse. But his admiration of Leon Trotsky, who is culpable in the mass murder of thousands, if not millions, is inexcusable. I am personally tired of people who exalt characters such as Trotsky, Che Guevara, and Mao Zedong, all of whom believed that the ends justified the means and that, and that in order to effect a revolutionary change in society, many would have to die (and did).

I found, by watching this interview, that Christopher Hitchens is an honest, albeit arrogant and sometimes rather obnoxious person who tends to act as if he is sitting on the throne of judgment, in charge of dispensing verdicts regarding those whose lives he has crossed. Ironically, I believe that his style is very attractive to a more passive, sheep-like audience that tends to look for aggressive personalities who see the world in stark black and white terms. And to me, this is a sort of paradox about Hitchens: while being so cut-and-dry with his opinions, he is also a confirmed skeptic. Skepticism as a philosophy, though, would seem to demand a more subtle and measured approach than that which Hitchens applies. That aside, agree or disagree, he is an interesting, different voice. And although he is at times brutal with his opinions, he does, to his credit, back them up with his reasons for them.

Rehearsing

I believe in the value of rehearsing. By that, I don’t just mean running through a musical or theatrical performance in advance to make sure everything’s all right: this strategy is useful in any area of life in which I have something ahead of me that needs to be done.

Suppose I want to do some writing when I get home from work instead of just crashing in my recliner with the remote to vegetate in front of the TV set. Instead, it would behoove me, while at work or driving home, to consciously visualize myself going through the necessary steps that I would need to take upon entering my home, with me finally imagining myself sitting and writing (instead of “sinking”). If I need to make an important phone call, it’s good that I go through the items (in my head) that need to be said, in order to ensure that I don’t miss saying important things when I am actually on the phone. If I have a long list of chores to do over the span of a few hours, going through the list and seeing me accomplishing each task can help to prioritize my actions as the day unfolds. Just before my piano class, rehearsing the assigned pieces, as well as the anticipated next ones, will make the class go more smoothly and effectively. I can, in the comfort and safety of my own home, rehearse how I will react to rude, aggressive, and distracted drivers on the road so that I won’t succumb to road rage when those inevitable offenses spring up while I’m actually driving. If I’m going out to eat, it’s a good idea to see myself beforehand selecting, ordering, and eating the more healthful foods from the menu, and then walking out of the restaurant feeling satisfied with my meal.

Humans tend to act from inertia: that is, we tend to repeat the same behavioral patterns simply for the sake of repeating them! And this is where rehearsing can help to break the limiting pattern of bad habits by substituting a more constructive pattern (even if it is only based on an imaginary experience) for the undesirable pattern. Thinking ahead to challenging areas of my life to do this is in itself not a habitual, fun thing. So, in order to get this helpful habit going, I guess I’m going to have to rehearse rehearsing!

Bible Observations: Genesis 1 and 2

The church that I attend with my family has an excellent, devoted pastor whose calling is the missions field. At any given time there are projects going on at different places scattered over the world that my church is actively involved in. Another area that my pastor emphasizes is that we read the Bible from cover to cover. The Bible is, according to my own church doctrine, perfect and without error. I believe that he meant for us to read the Bible reverently, with this in mind. But it didn’t take me very long in my reading (which naturally started with Genesis Chapter One) to find areas that are confusing, to say the least.

Genesis 1-2 is about God’s role as the creator of the universe, earth, life, and humans, as well as the beginning of the story of the first man and woman (Adam and Eve) and their initial placement within the Garden of Eden. So far, so good. Whether or not the events told in these two chapters actually happened as described is something that anyone is welcome to speculate on. But my problem is that I see some apparent contradictions within the text:

--In Genesis 1:3-5, on the first day, God created “light”. After separating light from darkness, He named the light “day” and the darkness “night”. But it wasn’t until the fourth day, in Genesis 1:16-18 when God created the Sun! And the plants, which depend directly on sunlight for survival, were created the day before!

--All of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2:1-2 deal with God’s six days of creation and seventh day of rest. Plants were created on the third day and man was created on the sixth. But in Genesis 2:4-6, it is revealed that before there were any plants, God formed man from the earth! [Although it must be said that this passage may have just been referring to plants cultivated in fields by people.]

Now, by bringing these “glitches” out, I mean no disrespect toward the religions whose adherents strongly believe everything that is in the Bible is 100% accurate. I’m simply asking someone out there to reconcile the discrepancies that I see here. After all, if the people who are targets of missions work start reading their Bibles, I wouldn’t want them to get tripped up “coming out of the gate”.

All that aside, I didn’t begin to read the Bible just to nitpick. For me, Genesis 1 presented the then-revolutionary idea that there was one God who created everything, as opposed to the multitudes of Gods that people of the time worshipped, and which were represented by man-made objects or natural objects like planets, the sun, volcanoes, the sea, the weather, the Earth, or a multitude of other things. And Genesis 2 brought forth an important concept on which everything else in the Bible is based: God is personal, and seeks relationship with humans both individually and collectively.

Choosing One's Own Battles

In this sometimes dog-eat-dog life, many issues can come up during the course of a day that appear to demand some kind of response. Whether it’s out in traffic, in the workplace, at home, at school, out shopping, or any other foreseeable situation, transgressions will often occur that will bring on an urge for correction and an assertive response. But from where I stand, if I were to react to every “wrong” done to me, then all I would ever be doing would be “reacting”! It seems that I must learn to choose my battles, which means that I must train myself to consciously forgo redress for minor offenses while concentrating on strategies that enable me to handle the most important situations. Whenever I think of someone, either in public life or in a fictional work, who is a success story, I discover that this individual most always sees ahead to the big issues while letting petty, trivial matters brush by.

But in order to accomplish this, I must carefully identify reactive behavior on my part as it happens and consciously work to eliminate it. One helpful way is to rehearse in advance situations that are most likely to provoke unsought “battles” and act out (in my mind) ways to get around them without becoming entrenched in petty conflicts.

One of Steven Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is “Begin with the end in mind”. That is, get a lifetime perspective in what you really want to accomplish in your life. Now contrast that with the assorted distractions and humiliations you put up with and spend too much time and energy thinking about and acting upon. Well, I’ve had it with that! From now on, I’m choosing my own battles! Life is too precious and short to spend dwelling on trivial offenses and trivial people. My priorities rest with the health, welfare, and happiness of my family and myself.

Saturday Newsbreak: 9/8

--Yesterday's Gainesville Sun carried the headline that the sudden emergence of the La Niña effect in parts of the Pacific, with its cooling of the waters there, may bring on an upsurge in the current Atlantic hurricane season, which is at its halfway point. And to emphasize this point, the meteorologists on The Weather Channel keep pointing to a spot (on the weather map) in the mid-Atlantic that looks to me like almost nothing, acting as if they expect it to erupt into a Class-Five hurricane now that their La Niña has "kicked in". Sometimes I get the feeling that they are disappointed when a tropical storm fails to develop (as if they feel that they owe the viewers an apology). Frankly, my take on it is that it won't hurt my feelings one bit if we don't get another tropical storm or hurricane the rest of the season! Unfortunately, this latest system has just been named as Subtropical Storm Gabrielle and may hit the Carolina coast.

--The same edition of the Sun estimates the death toll in Central America from Hurricane Felix at 98 so far. On page five. After an article comparing how toddlers and apes learn (the apes were better than the humans in math). And after more crucial Paris Hilton and Britney Spears news.

--Television actor, former Tennessee Senator and pro-Nixon Watergate hearings counsel Fred Thompson has just announced he is running for President. The fanfare surrounding his "proclamation" reminds me of Aladdin's alter ego "Prince Ali" as he made his grand entrance (with a little help from "Genie"). Although I don't believe that Mr. Thompson would make a very good President, he looks like the instant top challenger to leader Rudy Giuliani's bid to capture the Republican nomination (are all of the others going to start running for "Running Mate" soon?). The new entrant in the race has, in my opinion, a caustic, arrogant know-it-all air about him that makes me want to completely tune him out. But let's just see how far "Prince Fred" gets before he says something asinine that derails his campaign (I hope)!

--Speaking of the Presidential campaign, there seem to be two candidates, one for each major party, that are using the campaign primarily as a forum to espouse their strongly-held views, with little or no hope at actually winning. Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich is waving the progressive-left banner in the Democratic campaign, raising the Iraq War and social welfare issues while putting rival Democratic candidates on the defensive for straying from his "line" too much. On the Republican side, Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo is performing the mirror function, raising conservative issues (especially illegal immigration) that tend to put some of his rivals on the spot in their debates. As I believe that the campaign shouldn't even be going on yet, at least some of the important issues are being forced open for discussion by "candidates" like these. Which is constructive, regardless of what one thinks of them and their positions on different issues.

--The professional football season (NFL, that is) begins in full this weekend, with my Dolphins playing against the Washington Redskins. Unlike many others, I have high hopes for Miami this season. They may or may not win the division, but they at least should be in the thick of the running for a wild-card playoff spot.

--I was disappointed that the Florida State Seminole football team failed to beat Clemson this past Monday. But the season is very young, and they did show some promise in the second half of that game. The Florida Gators will try to get a full game in against Troy State this evening (last week's game was called due to lightning with eight minutes to go in the game). The most interesting game, as I see it, is going to be Louisiana State against Virginia Tech. Unlike probably most Gator fans, I'm pulling for the LSU Tigers in this one. Another interesting matchup will be the University of Miami Hurricanes vs. the Oklahoma Sooners.

Lessons Learned

Here are a few things that my wife has taught me over the past twenty-one years that we've been married:

--Whether the times in my life are good or bad, having someone I care for (and who cares for me) to share them with is more important than the experiences themselves.

--I do have interesting things to say that are worth listening to (because she listens to me).

--Close, enduring relationships are very important to have.

--It’s more important to express yourself honestly than to tailor yourself to fit the prevailing opinions.

--The world can be a wonderful place; why not reach out and take part in it?

--Things that are worthwhile are worth maintaining.

--Listening in a relationship is more important than talking.

--Differences between couples can serve to complement one with the other to make a stronger union.

--Similarities between couples can strengthen the bonds of communication and intimacy.

--A tender touch means a great deal.

--My life must show some degree of significance in order that a woman with such outer and inner beauty would love and care for me the way she has.

--Above all, she has taught me that which is truly beautiful, gracious, and enduring: our life together (for the past twenty-one years)!!

School is still in session!!!

Favorite Songs of 2006

2006 was a year dominated by independent and alternative songs (at least as far as I’m concerned). Here’s the list of my favorites (in very rough chronological order, with the artists in parentheses).

Hypnotize (System of a Down)
Reason is Treason (Kasabian)
Bigtime (Soundtrack of Our Lives)
Precious (Depeche Mode)
Dare (Gorillaz)
Juice Box (The Strokes)
Heart in a Cage (The Strokes)
Jacqueline (Franz Ferdinand)
Every Day is Exactly the Same (Nine Inch Nails)
Speak Easy (311)
I Turn My Camera On (Spoon)
Worldwide Suicide (Pearl Jam)
Gold Lion (The Yeah Yeah Yeahs)
If You Talk Too Much My Head Will Explode (People in Planes)
I Dare You (Shinedown)
Vicarious (Tool)
The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism (The New Pornographers)
Spanish Techno (The New Pornographers)
I’ll Follow You Into the Dark (Deathcab for Cutie)
Out of the Way (The Vines)
This Year (Mountain Goats)
Molly’s Chambers (Kings of Leon)
God’s Gonna Cut You Down (Johnny Cash)
Miss Murder (AFI)
Wonder Boy (Tenacious D)
Best of Jill Hives (Guided by Voices)
Spooky Action (Dear and Glorious Physician)
Knight of Cydonia (Muse)
Nausea (Beck)
Le Disko (Shiny Toy Guns)
Sugar (Ladytron)
White Unicorn (Wolfmother)

My top favorite song of 2006 was Tool’s Vicarious which, no matter how many times I heard it, I never tired of. In fact, my appreciation of this disturbing indictment of people who take joy in observing the suffering of others has only grown with each successive hearing. My #2 song for 2006 was Reason is Treason by Kasabian, a relentless, driving tune that I’ve heard has been featured on the TV series The OC (which I’ve never seen). Spoon's I Turn My Camera On, with a very strong bass and catchy beat, has been on a TV commercial. Another of my favorites for the year was the politically-incorrectly titled The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism by the politically-incorrectly named band the New Pornographers. This Year, by the Mountain Goats, contained the funniest line, “I am going to make it through this year if it kills me”! Come to think of it, the entire Tenacious D song Wonder Boy cracks me up! And the Strokes who, along with Kasabian, are in my opinion the two best bands currently around, came out with two winners: Heart in a Cage and the screaming-loud Juice Box. The best emotional tear-jerker was Shinedown's I Dare You.

Blog Musings

--You may have noticed that, after reading a few entries in this blog, it is not primarily informative in nature. Nor is it a very visually-oriented blog, either. Simply put, Alone in the Clouds All Blue is an expression of my reflections on different issues that come up from time to time, with a perspective that is usually either autobiographical or allegorical in nature. Often, to make a point, I will delve back in time to my youth to find a supporting example. Or, I may take a current news story and spin off of that. But you won’t find me analyzing in detail people I know or the different areas that I am presently personally connected to, be it job, church, family, or neighbors. Not that some aspects of these may come up in passing while discussing something else: I simply believe that it isn’t prudent to be indiscrete about what’s going on right now in my life (plus, I believe in the privacy of others).

--As for comments, I know for a fact that it isn’t so hard for a reader to just send one stating agreement or dissent with a particular entry. It can be done anonymously, or even contain a request that it not be published (which I would honor). If ever you do decide to make a comment, it will not be automatically published in the blog: I will read it first before publishing it. Comments with profanity or baseless name-calling are discouraged. Those with the sender’s e-mail address included within the body of the comment will not be published, in the interests of that person’s privacy. And neither will spam be published.

--I am not exactly a person predisposed to be what you might call a “true believer” in things. It seems that, once I feel inclined to support one side or another in a debate over an issue or public figure, then I instinctively try to discern the opposing arguments to my adopted position. Although this may seem to be oh-so-fair and high-minded, it doesn’t exactly make for a highly-charged, passionate blog, either! But I’m not going to write stuff I don’t believe, just to get people to read it.

--Once, a few weeks ago, I wrote an entry about an anti-government (whether Republican OR Democrat) talk-show host who had fallen on hard times, but was making a comeback. For that article, I received an anonymous comment charging that host with a certain form of bigotry. Upon investigating the source, I agreed with the commentator, for the quotes he or she sited were true. But later, I felt that this talk-show host had made those comments twelve years ago and nothing has come out since (to my knowledge). So in the interest of fairness, I withdrew the entries pertaining to this person. But if that commentator has anything else to contribute, I would welcome any more input.

--Another aspect to this blog is that I am using it to hold myself to some self-improvement projects I am undertaking, such as piano, running, reading, and learning some foreign languages. It’s been said that publicly proclaiming a personal endeavor is a big step toward ensuring its eventual success, and that’s why I write about mine on this blog.

--Out of the millions upon millions of blogs out there, if you happen to lay your eyes upon this one, I sincerely hope you enjoy reading it and returning at future dates, my valued reader!

Iraqi Parliament Vacation

Much fuss has been made both in the American media and by our politicians of the month-long summer “vacation” being taken by the Iraqi Parliament. After all, it has been said, our brave soldiers over there aren’t getting any vacations: they are putting their lives on the line every day, and what do the Iraqi leaders do? Instead of taking up crucial reconciliation legislation, they take off!

On the surface of it, this argument seems powerful enough to add one more good reason for the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq and let them handle their own problems. But consider the following. Except for the U.S. and Coalition military, who goes out openly into Iraqi anymore (besides the Iraqi people themselves, of course)? Where are the families and friends of these “vacationing” Iraqi politicians living, but Iraq itself, which is full of terrorists, insurgents, kidnappers, and miscellaneous people with axes to grind? Where do the Iraqi leaders go on “vacation”? To the French Riviera? Walt Disney World? Wally’s World? No, they go to Iraq, their home country. Some vacation, right? But the way the U.S. media reports it, you’d think they were just copping out on their responsibilities. I wonder how our leaders over here in America would act if, with every decision that was made, there was some armed faction somewhere around with a mile-long list of grievances and grudges ready to exact revenge on any politician (and their loved ones) who dared to vote against their perceived interests? And yet that is the situation that Iraq’s elected leaders find themselves in today, not just having to worry about violence being carried out against them by their political opponents, but also violence being carried out from behind their own “lines” if they should made too bold of a move toward reconciliation with opponents.

As for our soldiers over there, when they finally do get a break, they certainly won’t have to spend it in Iraq! And their families are over here, not there. Yes, while over there, they are certainly in harm’s way and deserve the support and admiration of all of us, regardless of our views about the war itself. But they have a place to come back to when their time of service ends. The Iraqis don’t.

Having said this, I think that the Iraqi Parliament was gravely mistaken in taken their recess this summer. The members, just by dint of being elected, are already marked in public by both their supporters and enemies. The sooner they are able to bring about reconciliation, then the sooner the political process within their beloved nation will be carried out in a more peaceful, constructive manner, with non-violent dissent replacing terror. Now, President Bush has gone to Iraq to try to stir up some action among the politicians there. Hopefully, they’ll respond positively and begin to act to bring their country together in peace.

Running on the Eights: 9/3

In July, I seemed to be making a lot of progress with my running, most of it on the treadmill. Still, I wanted to get outside and run on a course. But it was difficult adapting myself to the shock of the hard, stationary ground. On July 21, I ran two miles around a local running track, keeping to the grass on the straightaways, and I thought I did all right, until I got home, that is. Then, my right foot began to hurt a lot. Apparently, the hard jolting of my running tore some tissue connecting my right leg to my foot (around the front). I had to cease running until I felt comfortable to resume on August 18, this time strictly on the treadmill. I've since been more gradual in building up my distance on each run. My injury, I believe, was due not only to my diffuculty in adapting myself to running on the ground, but also to two other factors. One, I am a bit overweight, especially in terms of my optimum running weight. I'm going to have to lose about 25 pounds to get to my desired level (which I'm currently working on). Two, I was running on light running shoes with very little cushioning. Before resuming "ground" running, I need to purchase a pair of very comfortable, cushiony shoes. And avoid hard surfaces, running just on grass or dirt paths. Here is my running (and cross-trainer) record for the past eight weeks:

DATE DAY MILES TIME SURFACE
7-11--we---1.00---9:11 --asphalt
7-13--fr----3.11--26:55 --treadmill
7-15--su---0.67---6:00 --cross-trainer (level 10)
7-21--sa---2.00--19:11 --asphalt/grass
7-24--tu---0.65---6:00-- cross-trainer (level 10)
8-13--mo--0.71---6:00 --cross-trainer (level 10)
8-18--sa---0.25---2:00 --treadmill
8-21--tu---0.50---3:55 -----"
8-23--th---1.00---7:49 -----"
8-26--su---1.05---8:39 -----"
8-28--tu---1.05---8:27 -----"
8-30--th---1.05---8:21----- "
9-02--su---1.20---9:41----- "

Bicycling

When I was a kid, I was not a bicycle rider. We had one old bike in our utility room, which I sometimes practiced trying to ride in the back yard. But it wasn’t until I was seventeen that I actually purchased an inexpensive bicycle (all of the bikes I’ve had were very cheap) and began riding around. And for the next twenty-some odd years, I was hooked on riding bicycles.

Like I said, I never invested much money in bicycling, nor did I ever join a bicycling club. So, some others might say that I wasn’t “serious” about this hobby. But I saw bicycling as more than a fun activity: it was a totally legitimate form of transportation that I often used for going back and forth to work, school, shopping as well as for enjoying the outdoors. There is a certain take on life that one gets when riding slow enough for the surrounding scenery to imprint itself more deeply, both in terms of sight, sounds, and smells. A bicyclist has the opportunity not only to look around at things off from the road much more than a motorist: he or she can also stop “on a dime” and get off the bike to explore a suddenly interesting area that comes up. Or just walk the bicycle though (and park in) areas that no motor vehicles are allowed. Also, in the past I’ve enjoyed riding my bicycle past long lines of stationary traffic, whether due to rush hour conditions or for a University of Florida football game (or Gator Growl, their annual homecoming pep rally/show).

I am glad that my home town of Gainesville, Florida is a relatively bicycle-aware community that has invested a lot in make the town bicycle-friendly, especially with its bike-paths. But I’ve noticed during the past few years that we seem to be plagued with an increasing amount of aggressive motorists whose actions dramatically increase the danger of accidents to bicyclists. Distracted drivers, another increasingly disturbing phenomenon, often weave off the road and onto specially designated bicycle lanes. It can get a little scary these days riding along the side of the road on a two-wheeler!

For the past few years, I haven’t ridden my bicycle very much. Part of this is due to the exigencies of living, but part is also due to just getting out of the habit. Bicycling is a very good cardiovascular activity that can build up leg stamina as well, without exposing the legs and feet to the strains and potential injury that other higher impact activities like running carry with them. I’m thinking of getting my old bike out and riding around a bit (while being very wary of the local aggressive and distracted motorists). But although running can be a bit of a shock to the body, I’m continuing with that as well.

Saturday Newsbreak: 9/1

--Last June, Idaho Senator Larry Craig pleaded guilty to a public disturbance charge, based on his conduct at a Minneapolis, Minnesota airport restroom. It seems that there had been complaints that men were secretly meeting other men for sex there. There were supposedly secret signals that they would give each other through the stalls, such as tapping in code, which would apparently go unnoticed by legitimate restroom users. An undercover police operation had already netted several arrests when Craig was arrested. I don’t know which is more disgusting and creepy: going to a public restroom (which can be pretty disgusting and creepy in itself) and being around others using it for sex, or going there and having a cop hiding in a stall, waiting to spring on people if they accidentally make a “wrong” move! Anyway, Senator Craig is expected to resign.

--Speaking of the Senate, Republican John Warner, long-time Virginia Senator and former husband of Elizabeth Taylor, announced that he won’t run for reelection next year, retiring in January 2009. He always struck me as being a reasonable fellow, even when I disagreed with his conclusions. The US Senate (and I) will greatly miss his presence on the Senate floor. He has been a joy to listen to!

--A man sentenced to death in Florida for the rape and murder of a 94-year old woman in 1977 apparently will be executed, in spite of the fact that he has become a widely-recognized poet. Please understand that I don’t support the death penalty, for numerous reasons. And the sentence is being carried out thirty years after the crime? That aside, it makes me cringe with anger that some people think that this individual deserves preferential treatment over others sentenced to death because he’s become an academically-recognized writer. The same voices calling out for the commutation of his death sentence are silent in regard to the other “less literary-worthy” condemned people awaiting their fates.

--Today marks the first full weekend of NCAA college football. The University of Florida Gators open at home today against Western Kentucky. The most interesting games will be Tennessee vs. California, Florida State vs. Clemson (on Monday), Georgia Tech vs. Notre Dame, and Georgia vs. Oklahoma State. Unlike many of my fellow Gator fans, I always root for UF rivals whenever they play outside our Southeastern Conference. I also root for Florida State and Miami (except when they play against the Gators).

--It appears that NASA has spearheaded much of the scientific research about the severity of global warming. A new report from them has raised more alarm about this phenomenon. I’ve come to the conclusion, naysayers around me and in the media notwithstanding, that this is truly a major danger confronting us on a planetary scale. But I think that many people have rationalized the recent spikes in worldwide temperatures as being part of a natural long-term cycle, something that would be hard to categorically refute until it would be too late to avert major environmental disasters. Our Governor, Republican Charlie Crist has been a refreshing surprise in that he’s embraced the global warming evidence and supports efforts to save the planet from a dismal future.

Rickity-Rack

There was something rather subversive about my track practice in high school, specifically involving practice for middle and long-distance running. First, let me preface by stating for the record that I was not exactly one of the “shining lights” on the team. I have always believed that the only reason they let me stay on it was that, during that season, my school bestowed physical education credit on students going out for athletic teams (it was called “Varsity Sports”), and they let me “hang on” for that purpose. Compared to the general population, though, I was a very fast, good runner.

The runners on the track team generally alternated practices between days when they’d do interval training (relatively short, fast bursts around the track with very short breaks between runs) and long, cross-country runs (which all the middle and long distance runners would do together). We would run different courses in our long runs, but usually they involved running around the public schools near us, through fields, or along roads. But sometimes someone would come up with a new course that involved going down a dirt path that ran through obviously private property. So in many of our runs, we actually trespassed on other people’s property. There was even once when we, in doing this, came across some orange trees and then proceeded to split into two camps, having an impromptu orange-throwing war (with someone else’s oranges, of course). Eventually, our school began receiving irate complaints from its neighbors about the trespassing, and it was curtailed (but not completely). That put me in a bit of a bind: do I show loyalty to the team and participate in the trespassing, or do I respect others’ property rights and break off from the team? My answer was to stick with the team but be low-key about my presence. Chicken!

But there’s still something to be said for running down a seldom-traveled back road and then just going off down a mysterious dirt path branching out of it. Many of these dirt paths criss-cross each other, and if you made a couple of path-switches without maintaining your point of reference, you stood a chance of becoming hopelessly lost! But, at least for me, there is something rather exhilarating about stepping off the beaten path and running an unconventional course through land that may not be all that hospitable. One of my running teammates dubbed the dilapidated old back road running behind my high school as “Rickity-Rack”, a nonsensical name that sounded good and stuck. That was back in the early 1970s, though. Since then, that road has completely changed, and many of the mysterious pathways through the countryside around my old school have disappeared with the extensive development that has gone on in that area. I can’t imagine the current cross-country and track team runners there today having anywhere near the fun that we experienced back then! Of course, I don’t believe that I’d have the guts nowadays to just go down one of those dirt paths if they were still there (knowing what I know now about human nature).

Favorite Songs of 2007 (Through August)

In one of my earlier entries, I had mentioned discussing my favorite songs from more recent years. So, each week I will go back in time and list the music that I liked the most from year to year (progressively going back in time). Today, I begin with 2007. The artists are given in parentheses.

Think I’m in Love (Beck)
Suffer Well (Depeche Mode)
Phantom Limb (Shins)
Starlight (Muse)
Lazy Eye (Silversun Pickups)
Bohemian (Dandy Warhols)
Hang Me Up to Dry (Cold War Kids)
Lost in Boston (The Walkmen)
Ocean Man (Ween)
Sunshine (World Party)
Working Class Hero (Green Day)
Smile (Lili Allen)
Supermassive Black Hole (Muse)
Hey There Delilah (Plain White T’s)
Black Mirror (Arcade Fire)

Most of the above can be heard from AOL’s music archives, along with the videos. Of the bunch, my biggest favorites are Muse’s Starlight and Supermassive Black Hole, along with Lazy Eye by the Silversun Pickups, Dandy Warhols’s Bohemian, and Green Day’s excellent cover of John Lennon’s Working Class Hero. I also liked the love ballad Hey There Delilah, but it seems to have become a major nationwide hit and is being overplayed to death over the air. Every song on the list is on the playlist of 100.5-WHHZ “The Buzz”, a local independent/alternative radio station whose playlist has pretty much defined the genre of music I’ve been the most interested in for the past four or five years. When I listen to some of the mainstream hits on other radio stations, I realize how severely my tastes in music have begun to drastically diverge from those of others. Fortunately, WHHZ has, on their website, a section where they list the specific songs that they’ve played over the course of the day. Otherwise, I’d be clueless as to the identities and artists of half the songs on my list!

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

[WARNING: MAY CONTAIN PLOT SPOILERS]

One late night in the early 1980s, I was channel-surfing on my minuscule black and white television and came upon the very beginning of an interesting-looking Clint Eastwood western that I hadn’t seen before. Knowing that I’d have to be at work the following morning, I decided to go ahead and watch this movie and go to bed immediately afterward. This turned into a disaster, at least in terms of getting any sleep that night, because the movie I was watching was The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. And it lasted nearly four hours (including all of the interminable commercials)! But it really was a terrific movie, in spite of its never-ending nature. Like other “spaghetti” westerns like A Fistful of Dollars and For A Few Dollars More, Eastwood plays a quiet, brave, scheming, and sharpshooting drifter from the Midwest who wears the rough and dangerous wild west lifestyle as if he were born to it. In this movie, the plot centers around the struggle between three tough, ruthless individuals (including Eastwood’s unnamed character) to find hidden treasure that was earlier stolen and buried by some Confederate soldiers. Which brings me to what makes The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly such a great movie: while the three are engaging in their exciting, brutal quest, in the background the U.S. Civil War is going on unabated. And as the movie chugs along, the War’s role in the plot increases until it becomes clear that the overriding message this film means to convey is the futility and horror of war. The musical soundtrack was outstanding and appropriate, too. And the ending to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is truly a classic in the history of cinema, spoofed many times since. As to the title’s meaning, Eastwood played the “Good”, Lee Van Cleef played a ruthless, cruel paid assassin called Angel Eyes as the “Bad”, and Eli Wallach as Mexican bandit Tuco played the “Ugly”. Although Eastwood got top billing, it was Wallach who stole the show with his unforgettable performance.

Although it was pure fiction and filmed in Europe, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly showed the hard edge of life in the southwestern U.S. during the Civil War. The movie contained several flaws, which I enjoy laughing at every time I see them! I liked it so much that I got the DVD (without the obnoxious commercials). In spite of the movie’s extraordinary length, there is an even longer, uncut version occasionally shown on television that I recommend the most. Just make sure you’ve had enough sleep before watching!

Exclusivity and Acceptance Between Religions

Religions tend to be exclusive in nature: if you believe in one of them, then that belief tends to reject the validity of others. Now I acknowledge that there are sects like the Baha’is, the Unitarian Universalists, and Unity, who tend to promote the idea of a more universal legitimacy for religions. There are also more liberal forms of the traditional religions that tend to promote a more ecumenical acceptance of other religions. The predominant aspect of religions, however, is their intolerance of divergent beliefs, at least as far as doctrine is concerned. It doesn’t matter whether one is referring to Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism , or the multitude of other faiths: if you’re a “true believer” within a particular group, then to you, all of those outside the group are "in error", “astray”, “lost”, or, worse, “pagans”, “heathens”, or “infidels” (with all of the negative connotations).

But that’s not the entire picture. Within each group, be it Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism, there is a splintering off into subgroups (sects, denominations), which often regard the other groups with scorn and rejection, even when they are supposedly under the same religion’s “umbrella”. Thus you see conflicting doctrinal claims of legitimacy between Protestants, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox (Christianity), Reformed, Conservative, and Orthodox (Judaism), and Sunni and Shiite (Islam), to mention a few of the more prominent faiths.

Keeping in mind that statistically, the most reliable predictors of an individual’s adherence to a particular faith are his or her family background and geographical location, making knee-jerk judgments about followers of “outside” religions doesn’t make very much sense, at least to me. It’s one thing to believe strongly in a doctrine and that other doctrines have serious flaws in contrast to one's own: it’s another thing to divide the human race into good and evil based on which side of the religious fence one sees another as being on. So, I see no problem with missionaries of any religion going to any other part of the world to peacefully promote their faith and doctrine. To me, that kind of activity is part of one’s free and legitimate practice of his or her own religion. But I do have a problem with groups insisting that their worldview be imposed on everyone, or else they are somehow being made the target of religious persecution.


Since burgeoning global trade, as well as increasing international travel and almost instantaneous worldwide communication through the Internet and satellites is “shrinking” our world and bringing more and more people from different backgrounds and different “exclusive” religious beliefs in contact with one another, it appears obvious (at least to me) that there exists a dire need for a new creed of “social maturity” whereby people, either as individuals or in the groups of their own choosing, may believe and promote their own belief systems, but at the same time show the utmost respect for those “outside” of their own spheres of faith. Which sometimes includes both hearing doctrines different from their own as well as seeing some of their own religious taboos unknowingly broken by “outsiders” without going ballistic!

2007 NFL Predictions

I’ve been looking over the different teams in the NFL this season, and I don’t think that I’ve ever felt so strongly about the parity within the league between different teams. Every division (except the NFC North) seems to be up for grabs, with two or three teams looking very strong within each one. Here are my predictions for each division:

AFC EAST
1-Miami Dolphins
2-New England Patriots
3-Buffalo Bills
4-New York Jets

AFC SOUTH
1-Indianapolis Colts
2-Jacksonville Jaguars
3-Tennessee Titans
4-Houston Texans

AFC NORTH
1-Pittsburgh Steelers
2-Baltimore Ravens
3-Cincinnati Bengals
4-Cleveland Browns

AFC WEST
1-Denver Broncos
2-San Diego Chargers
3-Oakland Raiders
4-Kansas City Chiefs

NFC EAST
1-Dallas Cowboys
2-Philadelphia Eagles
3-New York Giants
4-Washington Redskins

NFC SOUTH
1-Tampa Bay Buccaneers
2-New Orleans Saints
3-Carolina Panthers
4-Atlanta Falcons

NFC NORTH
1-Chicago Bears
2-Detroit Lions
3-Green Bay Packers
4-Minnesota Vikings

NFC WEST
1-Seattle Seahawks
2-San Francisco 49ers
3-Arizona Cardinals
4-St.Louis Rams

But what do I know? Still, it’s fun to speculate how things will end up. Please forgive my unwarranted optimism about the Miami Dolphins: they are THE team that I root for the most, not just in the NFL, but in all sports! Virtually everyone else seems to think that the Patriots are the team to beat this year, but I disagree, Dolphins or no Dolphins. I personally believe that the AFC East will be the most ferocious, well-balanced division in the NFL, while the NFC East will be a close second in that regard. And once again, being an old Dolphins fan, I’ll be waiting for the moment in mid or late-season when there are no more undefeated teams left (keeping the 1972 Dolphins “perfect” season unmatched).

So, how’s it all going to end? Who knows, but I’ll give it my best shot: Dallas defeats Denver in the Super Bowl!

Language Learning Strategy

Back on July 25, I wrote an entry hinting of future foreign language entries on this blog. And that’s still my intention. However, I’ve recently gone through some of my old material, and I’ve found that I’m a bit rustier in them than I had thought! So, what I’m going to do, at least for the immediate future, is set up a study schedule in the languages I’m learning. Then, every eight weeks, I’ll report my progress in them on this blog. At some point, I’ll begin to write entries in some of them, with an open invitation for any readers fluent in them to correct mistakes in grammar or usage. In the meantime, I can also figure out how to use the fonts supplied by my Windows software on my computer that correspond to the languages I want to write in. But, like I said, that’s a bit off in the future. For now, I’m going to plod along with my studies and report on what I’m doing and the progress I’m making. The languages, once again, are Spanish, French, German, Polish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese. I’m also adding Latin to the list because my daughter has it for a class at school. There is some study material I need to obtain, particularly with Vietnamese, but with the great bookselling companies on the Web, that shouldn’t be a problem. What I’m really uncertain about is the best audio study method around (for the price, that is). I’ve heard Rosetta Stone is good, but expensive (especially if you’re talking about multiple languages). However, I believe that once a language student gets a good sense of how a language is spoken and sounds (and I already do with the languages I’m studying), then the real daunting task is to build up a good working vocabulary of thousands of words in each of them. And, of course, the details of grammar as well, especially when I’m writing articles in them!

Saturday Newsbreak: 8/25

Here are a few observations from the past week:

--The overwhelming attention paid by the media to Hurricane Dean, in comparison to the torrential floods in Ohio, the parching drought in northern Alabama, and the searing heat wave affecting much of the country (including Gainesville), makes me wonder: what’s in a name? It seems that the mere bestowing of a name on something, even if it is completely inanimate, gives it a legitimacy and importance that is often more than it merits, especially in comparison with other concerns. Maybe they should also come up with names for floods, heat waves, droughts, fires, and blizzards!

--Gainesville, the home of the University of Florida, has swollen up with an unprecedented student population in the past few days. The traffic around here is much worse than any I experienced in South Florida earlier this month. It looks like they’re going to have to open up a few new Starbucks to accommodate the increase!

--Speaking of coffee shops, I’m dismayed to have to report the closing of Corner Cup, a locally-owned quality coffee shop (and small restaurant) which had the best tasting coffee in town. It had different owners from time to time, but this time, the new owner is switching the store’s format more in the direction of fabrics, something that I’ve never been able to get interested in!

--Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards, for some unknown reason, is waging a war of sorts against the Fox News Channel. Any reasonable person would acknowledge the pro-right bias of Fox, but it is nevertheless a very popular forum that is open for guests of all political persuasions with nationwide exposure. And those liberals who have appeared on Fox, such as Joseph Biden and Charles Rangel, have come off quite well. I’m convinced that one big factor leading to John Kerry’s defeat was his refusal to be interviewed on Fox when the offer was extended both to him and President Bush (who accepted, appeared, and won) just before the election. And Edwards shouldn’t have even brought up the name of pathetic Ann Coulter, who, if she just is let free to speak her mind openly, can do more for the Democrats than they could themselves.

--It’s getting to be the time in the major league baseball season when teams in close races either begin to surge or fade. The two teams I’m following seem to be going in opposite directions: the New York Yankees seem to be peaking at the right time, while the Atlanta Braves seem tired and ready to fall back in their division.

--Google is reportedly now offering a view of space from the computer screen as a companion service to their GoogleEarth. One supposedly will be able to use material taken from the Hubble Space Telescope to see galaxies and other phenomena in deep space.

A Beautiful Mind and the War on Terror

[WARNING: CONTAINS PLOT SPOILERS FOR A BEAUTIFUL MIND]

A few years ago, I saw the movie A Beautiful Mind, directed by Ron Howard and starring Russell Crowe as brilliant, schizophrenic mathematician John Nash who, upon coming of age and prominence in the Cold War years immediately following World War II, succumbs to numerous delusions and hallucinations due to his illness. One of these hallucinations is a U.S. secret government agent, William Parcher (played perfectly by Ed Harris) who enlists Nash in a top-secret counterterrorism project to prevent the smuggling across the northern U.S. border and detonation of a nuclear bomb by a splinter Soviet terrorist group. This movie (which was made just before 9/11 and released shortly thereafter), portrays his delusion about the terror plot he is working against as an extreme flight of paranoid fantasy. Even after Nash has been confronted with his delusion, he still harbors deep feelings that it is all real. And, after he lets his anti-schizophrenic medication lapse, he begins to see Parcher again. Parcher, in turn, confirms to him the reality of the plot, ratcheting up its crisis level (the bomb is already in the country, in its final stage). Once again, it’s all up to John Nash, with his unique, gifted code-breaking talent to save the day for everybody!

After the horrendous terrorist attacks on our nation on September 11, 2001, our Executive Branch, through agencies such as the Justice Department and Homeland Security, began to broadcast terror alerts to the country. A lot of the alerts simply consisted of pushing up a color-warning system to a higher level without revealing any substantive information about a threat. Other times, a rumor about a threat to a particular area would leak out. And of course, whatever the detailed facts were behind these warnings, this greatly alarmed many people in the general public who had no idea of what to do about them. The threats, in their details, were all top-secret, like William Parcher and his “bomb-plot”. Only instead of one sad, mentally ill person having to absorb the troublesome news, it was an entire nation! There were several occasions in those years immediately following 9/11 that I felt manipulated (rightly or wrongly) by my government, much in the way that Nash was manipulated by Parcher.

A Beautiful Mind is a great movie that contains many truths on many different levels. The acting is incredible and the plot unfolds like a Hitchcock movie, full of sudden twists and surprises. Having said this, it needs to be noted that this movie, based on the book with the same title by Sylvia Nasar, diverges from that book in some crucial areas that would have interfered with the movie’s culminating “moral” message. So, I’d advise anyone who’s seen the movie that the book will “straighten you out” in some areas of John Nash’s story!

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

When I was eight years old, I began to watch The Man from U.N.C.L.E., one of the American responses to the successful British James Bond movies. In it, secret agents Napoleon Solo (played by Robert Vaughn) and Illya Kuryakin (played by David McCallum) worked for the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, a.k.a. U.N.C.L.E.. Their nemesis was the evil organization THRUSH, similar to James Bond’s enemy SPECTRE. U.N.C.L.E.’s chief was an elderly man named Mr. Waverly (played by Leo G. Carroll). Most of the episodes, titled as “affairs”, revolved around Solo and Kuryakin being given assignments to unravel and foil sinister plots by THRUSH to do naughty things to the world: in other words, pretty much like James Bond, but in the U.S. on TV! From late 1964 through most of 1966, this series was my favorite show on television. The stories were well-written and they brought top-notch stars to play various guest roles. I would list and memorize the titles for each episode, going through old issues of TV Guide to find episodes that I had missed (they used to list episode titles back then). One Christmas, I got a toy Man from U.N.C.L.E. kit, complete with toy gun, ID badge, and “official” membership card.

The quality of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. gradually began to dip as the years wore on, and I began to lose interest in the series. It seemed to me, even at my young age, that the producers had decided to make the episodes more juvenile to appeal more to a younger audience. This was especially true with its spin-off series The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., which ran for a relatively short span. After the original series was cancelled in 1968, I expected to be seeing reruns in a few short years, as was the case with other old series. But this mysteriously did not happen, and it wasn’t until 1986 that I was able to see a rerun of my old favorite show on a cable TV channel. As it turned out, MGM Studios, which owned rights to the series, had withheld it from syndication for all these years, in spite of its popularity. The turkeys!

Now, for some time, AOL has been showing old episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. from its television “In2TV” service. And I’ve had a great time getting back into the series! From my vantage point in 2007, I get a kick out of seeing U.N.C.L.E. headquarters’ huge “advanced” computer with its rows of buttons, switches, and flashing colored lights, along with the “pen” phone/radios that the agents used to talk to Waverly or each other. Nowadays, of course, with cell phones shrinking and even “disappearing” with innovations like Blue Tooth, Napoleon Solo wouldn’t have a prayer of a chance of impressing a pretty young woman with his then-seemingly-magical pen-phone.

When I discovered that AOL was rerunning some shows from the old series, I checked out a good website called The Man From U.N.C.L.E. episode guide that listed and described all of the episodes. And something hit me: I remember that, in late 1966, I had seen a really good two-part U.N.C.L.E. (The Concrete Overcoat Affair, co-starring Jack Palance and Janet Leigh), but my recollection of watching the series afterward is very vague. Upon seeing the list of episodes in the sequence that they were broadcast then, I discovered my “two-parter” was followed by probably the two worst episodes of the series. And one of them, The My Friend the Gorilla Affair, has been described as not only the worst episode of the series, but also one of the worst episodes in the history of television! So, of course I’m now waiting for AOL to offer that one! But I wonder whether the effect of watching this episode was so traumatic for me back in December 1966 that I wiped it and subsequent episodes from memory!

Hollywood, Florida

From the time that I was four in late 1960 until the time I moved out in 1977, I lived in the city of Hollywood, Florida. Well, actually, from 1960 to 1965, it was West Hollywood until Hollywood swallowed it up, for reasons I have yet to fathom. On its own, Hollywood stands as a pretty big-sized city, but it’s sandwiched between the giants of Fort Lauderdale and Miami/Dade County. Hollywood, many years ago, had its own hometown paper, the Hollywood Sun-Tattler (which went under long ago), and as far as I can see, now has little representation in the media down there. When we moved there in late 1960, we were on the western fringes of the populated area in South Florida, with little to our west except cow pastures and the Everglades. Now, however, I’d say that my childhood home lies slightly to the east of the center of population! It’s certainly gotten very congested, to say the least! Even the old elementary school two blocks from my house, where I went to from the first through third grades, has almost completely plugged up its formerly spacious playground area with more school buildings.

Some of my most vivid memories of Hollywood involve riding with my family eastward down its main artery, Hollywood Boulevard, going either to the railroad station (running parallel to Dixie Highway) to pick up or see off my visiting grandparents or to Hollywood Beach to spend a sunny weekend day in the ocean, on the sand, and along Hollywood’s Boardwalk. The most notable aspect of our trips, to me, was going around the three huge circles on the Boulevard, each spaced a couple of miles apart from each other. Driving east toward the first circle, which contained the winter home for Riverside Military Academy (based in Gainesville, Georgia), I looked around and could see many large fields full of slash pines. Recently, the same view yielded a large, ugly (to me) glass building where Riverside used to be and nothing but buildings lining the Boulevard where the fields used to be. And going around the circles is an art in itself: one has to be very careful to stay in the correct lane (which is largely guesswork) in order not to be suddenly diverted onto a different road.

The most notable change I noticed along Hollywood Boulevard between then and now is how they’ve completely renovated the downtown area between Dixie Highway and the easternmost (Young) circle as a very pedestrian-friendly, pretty shopping and dining area. Once east of Young Circle, very little has changed over the years. As a kid, coming off the last circle, I would also get excited looking toward the end of Hollywood Boulevard at the looming Hollywood Beach Hotel, which signified the beach to me. It had an almost Oz-like feel to it, going down that road. We’d cross the draw bridge, turn north on A1A, and almost always park near the big water tower that was a little up the road. Then, to the boardwalk and beach!

The Hollywood Beach Hotel later became Florida Bible College. More recently, Ramada took ownership and has renovated this old hotel. My family and I stayed there a couple of nights earlier this month. We weren’t too happy with their parking arrangements, and the room we had booked had a problem with the air conditioning. But the staff allowed us to switch rooms and we pretty much enjoyed our stay there. But I still got a creepy Stephen King-like feeling (The Shining, 1408) walking down their hallways. There was a small food court in the lobby which had a “Hong Kong” Chinese restaurant and a Pizza place. They both had excellent food and service!

Outside, the ocean and pool were both very, very warm. They always seemed to have a live band cranking out music at an open restaurant off the Boardwalk on the hotel’s ocean side. And we walked down the Boardwalk at night, which was a pretty interesting experience in itself.

I miss the old Hollywood, but I’m realistic enough to recognize that change can be good as well. It seems that the city has taken great pains in making its eastern side as attractive as possible while letting urban sprawl run rampant in its western half. Still, I think overall, Hollywood has done a better job over the years of making itself a pleasant place to visit than some of its adjacent communities (although I think I’d go nuts if I had to live there again!).

Maintenance and the Throw-Away Culture

Once, many, many years ago, the telescopic antenna on my shortwave radio broke. A friend of mine, upon seeing it, asked me why I didn’t replace it. My response was that the radio still worked fine for my purposes. I believe his reaction, if my memory serves me correctly, was to just shake his head, grinning. And, for better or (probably) for worse, that’s pretty much been a pattern in my life: buy something, and after it gets partially broken or damaged, just keep using it until it’s completely useless! And then get it replaced!

Robert Pirsig, in his philosophical/autobiographical work Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, divided the world between people who took care of their possessions and those who just wore them out and replaced them. The case in point was how different owners took care of their motorcycles. He was one of the “maintainers” and promoted the value of treating one’s possessions with respect and care. This in turn would promote a nurturing nature that would carry over into one’s relationships with other people. And Pirsig demonstrated this in Zen and the Art with his devotion for his son in their cross-country quest.

And there really does seem to be a correlation of sorts between the materialistic throw-away culture we live in and the apparently more expedient and expendable relationships that people nowadays tend to form with one another. There seems to be an ever-shortening, ever-deafening beat pounding within people as time marches on, prodding and stressing them to the point where only one thing counts, the precious commodity known as NOW, with too many demands (or temptations) competing with each other for ascendancy in the all-important “present moment”. All too often, the needed maintenance of possessions (and relationships) dims in importance compared to flashier, more transitory distractions. As mature human beings, we need to decide what’s really important to pay attention to in our present moments and, just as importantly, what to reject as well. And one pathway to that, at least as far as my own personal experiences has shown, is for me to pay more attention to fostering better habits of taking care of my material possessions, like Robert Pirsig in his wonderful story. But it won’t be easy!